The new camera bump is slightly larger than before, but it doesn't change anything about what it's like to use the tablet.

Andrew Cunningham

Nothing Apple has done in the last three years has reversed the iPad’s sales decline, or stopped it, or even really slowed it down all that much. But 2017 has made clear that if the iPad keeps falling, it won’t be for lack of trying.

On the software side, you’ve got iOS 11, an update that makes iOS 9’s multitasking additions look rudimentary and quaint. It adds a distinctly Mac-like application dock and dramatically changes how the device runs and interacts with multiple apps at the same time. The changes allow for much-improved "window" and file management, and you can easily drag-and-drop content between apps.

Further Reading

On the hardware side, the lineup is as compelling as it’s ever been for the new buyers and upgraders Apple needs to attract to push up sales. The £340 iPad sticks to the basics, offering people a great first tablet or an ideal upgrade for that ageing iPad 2. And the new iPad Pros push the lineup a step further, pairing interesting screen technology and accessory support with performance you’d normally expect from a more expensive laptop.

Apple refreshed both iPad Pro models this month, but today we’re focusing specifically on the 10.5-inch version, the one that has been changed the most visibly. It’s got a bigger, better screen; it’s got a better, faster chip with more RAM; and its enlarged Smart Keyboard makes it a whole lot nicer to work on than its predecessor. It might not convince you that an iPad can really be a “pro” device, but it makes a much more convincing argument for itself than the 9.7-inch tablet it replaces.

The 10.5-inch iPad tweaks a few fundamentals of the iPad’s design for the first time since the iPad Air came out in 2013. The Air, Air 2, iPad 5, and the 9.7-inch Pro all made small changes, but they all also had the same screen size and resolution and the same bezels (and the Air design was mostly just a larger version of 2012’s iPad Mini, much as the 12.9-inch iPad Pro was just a bigger version of the Air).

The 10.5-inch Pro keeps most of the same design language—a glass front, an aluminium back, thinner bezels on the sides of the screen, shiny chamfered metal edges, rounded but well-defined corners and edges, and the same ports in the same places—but changes the proportions and fits in a screen that’s almost an inch larger on the diagonal. It fits this screen in partly by increasing the size of the tablet ever so slightly, from 9.4 by 6.6 inches to 9.8 and 6.8 inches. But the proportion of screen to bezel is also higher than it is in any other iPad, including the new 12.9-inch model, which gets all of the same new features as the 10.5-inch model but keeps the same design.

The 10.5-inch Pro is exactly as thick (0.24 inches) and only slightly heavier than its predecessor (from 0.96 pounds to 1.03 pounds), using it feels mostly the same, especially if it’s on a table, a desk, or your lap. It’s still a great size for plane computing, since it can sit upright on its Smart Cover or Smart Keyboard even if you don’t have much legroom and the person in front of you has leaned his or her seat back. If you’re trying to use it while you’re holding it, though, it's a bit more of a strain than with a normal iPad Air 2. Your thumbs have to stretch that much further to reach everywhere on the software keyboard, and slimmer bezels means being just a little more careful about where you put your thumbs. But these changes all fall well within the “you’ll get used to it” category.

As for other changes, the camera bump from the older iPad Pro returns, and it’s bigger than before; the iPhone 7 lens assembly that both the new iPads use takes up more space than the 6S-era camera that the old 9.7-inch iPad Pro used. Also, the TouchID sensor has been upgraded to the “second generation” model also found in the iPhone 6S and 7. The only difference is that it’s faster.

The new screen

Of all the computers Apple sells, none of them have screens that do quite as much stuff as the iPad Pros are doing.

That list starts with DCI-P3 colour gamut support (new in the 12.9-inch Pro, returning to the smaller one) and an anti-reflective coating, features also present in recent iMacs and MacBook Pros. But the True Tone feature, which detects the colour temperature of the ambient light and adjusts the display’s colour temperature to match. Most significantly, the iPad’s refresh rate has been bumped up to 120Hz, twice the normal 60Hz. The screens in the iPad Pros are the best screens Apple ships, which is appropriate for a thing that’s just a giant screen by design.

Further Reading

The 10.5-inch Pro has a 2224×1668 screen, up just a little bit from the 2048×1536 in 9.7-inch iPads. The density is identical, so photos and text are exactly the same size they were before; you can just fit a bit more of it on screen at once.

The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus and iOS 9 all pushed developers in the direction of resolution-dependent apps, so most apps expand relatively gracefully to fill the entire screen. While using Split View mode, it helps both apps breathe a little bit more. That said, the smaller iPad Pro still can’t fit two full-size iPad apps side-by-side; in developer parlance, you can see one “regular” app and one “compact” app or two “compact” apps, the same as on the 9.7-inch iPads. The 12.9-inch iPad Pro is still the only one that can handle two “regular” apps at once. In the cases where apps aren’t written to support resolution independence, the tablet stretches them a bit, making them slightly blurry but avoiding a letterboxing effect.

A 9.7-inch iPad.

Andrew Cunningham

The same screen on the 10.5-inch iPad. It's not too different, there's just a little more space between everything.

Andrew Cunningham

9.7-inch iPad.

Andrew Cunningham

10.5-inch iPad.

Andrew Cunningham

9.7-inch iPad.

Andrew Cunningham

10.5-inch iPad.

Andrew Cunningham

9.7-inch iPad.

Andrew Cunningham

10.5-inch iPad.

Andrew Cunningham

9.7-inch iPad.

Andrew Cunningham

10.5-inch iPad.

Andrew Cunningham

9.7-inch iPad.

Andrew Cunningham

10.5-inch iPad.

Andrew Cunningham

9.7-inch iPad.

Andrew Cunningham

10.5-inch iPad.

Andrew Cunningham

Let’s talk more about that 120Hz refresh rate, since it’s the new display’s most significant addition. Apple calls it “ProMotion,” and it makes all animations and motion on screen look really fluid and smooth and great. App developers don’t need to do anything to take advantage of it—Word and Tweetbot and Chrome and Slack and all my normal productivity apps all benefitted from the new screen with zero updates required.

To keep the 120Hz screen from completely destroying the tablet’s battery, Apple has continued to refine the variable refresh rate tech that it introduced in the last-generation Pro. Those models still had a 60Hz refresh rate, but they could drop down to 30Hz when displaying static or slow-moving content. The new Pro screens can go from 120Hz to as low as 24Hz (which eliminates 3:2 pulldown for 24 FPS videos) and pretty much anywhere in between, giving you smooth animation when you need it but saving your battery (and in some cases, making your stuff look better) when it can.

Apple told us that the variable refresh rate is made possible by a block in the A10X chip, one that flips the normal relationship between the display and the GPU that drives it. Rather than having a display that asks the GPU for new content 60 times per second, as is the current standard, the GPU in the iPad Pro tells the screen how many times per second to refresh.

As for how it is to use a 120Hz display, I can say that it’s undeniably slick and it makes animations and transitions look great; it’s also easier to read text and scroll simultaneously, since the “ghosting” effect you get at 60Hz is much-reduced. None of the display improvements that Apple has made post-Retina—an ever-longer list that now includes the DCI-P3 colour gamut, True Tone, and ProMotion—have had quite as big an impact as those sharper screens did, but the 120Hz refresh rate comes close. The sooner this trickles outward to the iPhone and Apple’s various Macs, the better.

Andrew Cunningham
Andrew has a B.A. in Classics from Kenyon College and has over five years of experience in IT. His work has appeared on Charge Shot!!! and AnandTech, and he records a weekly book podcast called Overdue. Twitter@AndrewWrites

512GB on an iPad isn't easy to backup and if you're using them for content creation then there definitely needs to be a backup system.

1. To Apple's shame, Time Machine doesn't backup iPads (or other iDevices), and (I hope I'm wrong) there is no indication it will do so with AFS next year.

2. Backing up with iTunes would be an exercise in tedium, tethers the iPad, and isn't automatic. You also need to back up to a large attached HDD, as this will blow away most SSDs, thus taking even longer to scan and backup.

So much for local backups.

3. Apple's preferred method is to backup to iCloud. That means paying a minimum of $120 per year for 2TB space; no backups until the device is plugged in with locked screen; accepting that any bouts of creation will then clog up everyone's upload bandwidth for the next few hours, no access to the versioning that Time Capsule gives, and facing a several hundred GB download if you need to restore. Oh, and if you stop paying, the backups are gone.

it's a disservice that all the coverage I've seen so far is not blasting them for not making the switch to USB-C port. This article danced around it but didn't even say that if it was straight up USB-C like the MacBook it would be faster (& more 'pro).

4- I'm still unclear why we need a different tvOS not just a different UI + app filters; then again AndroidTV does the same even though a regular-Android box with a remote-friendly Launcher and apps works just as well and is a lot more versatile.

5- Does using the same UI from 4.7" to 12.9" make that much sense ? Isn't that a bigger difference that touch vs non-touch ?

They are supposed to have two distinct OS, one aimed at mobility and touch and other to classical desktop. So, according to them, that's a feature, not a bug. Of course this is somehow compromised by their focusing of the iPad Pro as a productivity device, which, I would say, isn't the right option for most users, including many with pretty regular requirements.

Yes the apps are different, but you could argue iPads have a far better ecosystem of touch-enabled apps than Windows or Android tablets.

As for iPad UI, I think that iOS 11 solidifies the iPad specific features and the distinction with small screens.

Can we please stop using iOS, MacOS, and Windows versions of Geekbench like they are somehow interchangeable? Its different codebases and the results are NOT comparable.

Run LINpack on that SoC and see if it really has more floating point performance than a mobile i7 like you seem to be saying.

They are entirely and directly comparable. The code and tasks are exactly the same -- only the compiler and standard libraries are different.

And if you're not convinced, there's platform agnostic javascript benchmarks that also show Apple cleaning Intel's clock.

a) Geekbench has never proven than a score in x86 is directly translatable to a score on iOS. If they have (showing LINPack or SPECint results that correlate directly with Geekbench scores) I missed it and I cannot find it.

b) Compiler differences make ALL the difference. Leaves them with different codebases.

c) Javascript benchmarks are literally the opposite of "Platform agnostic" since they have 2 platform differences instead of just one (OS + Browser instead of just OS).

I ordered the maxed out 12.9" which I hope to use with Playgrounds to teach my 10 & 11 year old children Swift coding. I had been literally sitting on an unlimited data provisioned SIM in my wallet from T-mobile for a couple months awaiting a 12.9" that support LTE band 12. And now I'm extra happy I waited given the excellent performance boost, better cameras, and better displays.

It was quite a gulp paying that much for a fully decked out iPad though.

4- I'm still unclear why we need a different tvOS not just a different UI + app filters; then again AndroidTV does the same even though a regular-Android box with a remote-friendly Launcher and apps works just as well and is a lot more versatile.

5- Does using the same UI from 4.7" to 12.9" make that much sense ? Isn't that a bigger difference that touch vs non-touch ?

Much of what MS and Apple do on the desktop side is rooted in something that started more than 30 years in the past. It seems Apple is happy to start over in the present, while MS tries to get everything covered in one OS. Both ways of doing this come with their own set of advantages and disadvantages.

4- I'm still unclear why we need a different tvOS not just a different UI + app filters; then again AndroidTV does the same even though a regular-Android box with a remote-friendly Launcher and apps works just as well and is a lot more versatile.

5- Does using the same UI from 4.7" to 12.9" make that much sense ? Isn't that a bigger difference that touch vs non-touch ?

Apple went with the idea that different types of devices require different user experiences. Having an adapted UX means the user has something that feels natural for the device and developers are forced to build with the target platform in mind. Different OS naming also helps separate the marketing.

Contrast this to Microsoft which tried pushing the Windows name to every device experience and tried shoehorning a desktop experience into a mobile device (WindowsCE) and then recently tried shoehorning a mobile experience into the desktop. What happened in the first case, beyond a poor user experience, were developers who did very little to consider how the user interaction was different. This showed in some applications that appeared to be no more than desktop ports with very little thought.

I have a bias towards Apple's approach since it has worked and it also feels like the difference in design concepts use in aeroplane controls and car controls. A merger of concepts can happen, but not without careful consideration of the UI, UX and the culture it may foster.

4- I'm still unclear why we need a different tvOS not just a different UI + app filters; then again AndroidTV does the same even though a regular-Android box with a remote-friendly Launcher and apps works just as well and is a lot more versatile.

5- Does using the same UI from 4.7" to 12.9" make that much sense ? Isn't that a bigger difference that touch vs non-touch ?

I watched the Metal 2 session and it sounds like it can indeed freely adapt like Freesync, not just fixed rates like the previous 30/60Hz Pro. Scrolling should be absolutely butter.

There's a few modes developers can choose, lowest latency (which I guess is the most Freesync), display frame for set time whenever it's ready (8ms etc), and something else and something else. Neat session though.

4- I'm still unclear why we need a different tvOS not just a different UI + app filters; then again AndroidTV does the same even though a regular-Android box with a remote-friendly Launcher and apps works just as well and is a lot more versatile.

5- Does using the same UI from 4.7" to 12.9" make that much sense ? Isn't that a bigger difference that touch vs non-touch ?

Apple went with the idea that different types of devices require different user experiences. Having an adapted UX means the user has something that feels natural for the device and developers are forced to build with the target platform in mind. Different OS naming also helps separate the marketing.

Contrast this to Microsoft which tried pushing the Windows name to every device experience and tried shoehorning a desktop experience into a mobile device (WindowsCE) and then recently tried shoehorning a mobile experience into the desktop. What happened in the first case, beyond a poor user experience, were developers who did very little to consider how the user interaction was different. This showed in some applications that appeared to be no more than desktop ports with very little thought.

I have a bias towards Apple's approach since it has worked and it also feels like the difference in design concepts use in aeroplane controls and car controls. A merger of concepts can happen, but not without careful consideration of the UI, UX and the culture it may foster.

I understand, but that was 10 yrs ago. The devices and the UX state of the art have progressed wildly since then:- a Windows XP UI couldn't work on a phone (I know, God do I know, I had an HTC HD2 ^^), a Metro UI is fine.- a 4.7" 128 MB RAM 500MHz single-core ARM phone has different constraints than a 19" desktop, agreed. But isn't the iOS philosophy very artificially segregating a 12.9" docked iPad Pro from a significantly less powerful 11" MacBook Air ?- Size, power, ports, even uses have utterly converged. Why is the mere OS creating a break, and at a random break-point at that ?

I'm not saying one size fits all. Part of the "Mobile" revolution is that apps and their UI are de-coupled to run on small phones, large phones, tablets (and in the case of Windows, laptops and desktops). I can't grok why an extra "Desktop" UI on iOS (or a TV one) has to impact the purely Mobile UIs that are already present. Android isn't ruined by supporting mice either. Android has a lot of issues. None of them caused by supporting mice. Or USB peripherals.Or Desktop launchers. Or direct file access.

With a fourth core and the caches/bandwidth to sustain it, this would totally keep up! A 47 watt 4C/8T CPU from just a few years ago, now in a fanless ARM chip. That's nutty. Some people are understandably frustrated at the lack of performance gains in the high wattage segment, but where there are still big gains is bringing more power down to lower wattages.

It also seems to be a pretty fair foil for the 1499 Macbook Escape in the review charts, Intel must be watching that closely.

I /really/ want to see what an A10X could do with a heatsink and fan...

Should you include in the cost of ownership the cost of backing up? ...3. Apple's preferred method is to backup to iCloud. That means paying a minimum of $120 per year for 2TB space; no backups until the device is plugged in with locked screen; accepting that any bouts of creation will then clog up everyone's upload bandwidth for the next few hours, no access to the versioning that Time Capsule gives, and facing a several hundred GB download if you need to restore. Oh, and if you stop paying, the backups are gone.

Or you could, you know, use OneDrive, or Dropbox, or Box through the new Files app. It's not 'full' local backup, but it would be perfectly possible to store and selectively mirror personal files and folders in the cloud. It's what I do with my non-pro iPad, as I am not going to pay Apple a cent for iCloud storage (I have unlimited storage already through Box).

Anyway, Apple announced a new tier of iCloud storage at WWDC: you don't need the full 2tb, the 50GB account is $0.99 a month, much better VFM

Mouse support now, Apple. How the hell is gorilla arm a good user experience?

I'm not an UX expert, but the idea of using a mouse with an iPad seems counter intuitive and inneficient

It really depends on the situation. My tablet is positioned as a 3rd screen next to my PC's 2 screens. I much prefer using a mouse with it. Then again, no multitouch (though that would be very easy to implement on a touch mouse).

Why compare with the 12" MacBook and not the much more reasonably priced MacBook Air? The iPad Pro as reviewed is more expensive than an Air. With the Air, you get a full size keyboard, track pad, and full macOS support, including Xcode. You miss out on the high dpi screen and the pencil, and it weighs twice as much.

With a fourth core and the caches/bandwidth to sustain it, this would totally keep up! A 47 watt 4C/8T CPU from just a few years ago, now in a fanless ARM chip. That's nutty. Some people are understandably frustrated at the lack of performance gains in the high wattage segment, but where there are still big gains is bringing more power down to lower wattages.

It also seems to be a pretty fair foil for the 1499 Macbook Escape in the review charts, Intel must be watching that closely.

I /really/ want to see what an A10X could do with a heatsink and fan...

Mouse support now, Apple. How the hell is gorilla arm a good user experience?

I'm not an UX expert, but the idea of using a mouse with an iPad seems counter intuitive and inneficient

If you are trying to use it for productivity, the mouse is still quite viable. With my Surface Pro 3 I alternate between touch, keyboard/touch, and keyboard/mouse depending on what I'm doing (or feel like).

And now, I find myself occasionally trying to use touch swipes on the screen on work and home laptops.

Can we please stop using iOS, MacOS, and Windows versions of Geekbench like they are somehow interchangeable? Its different codebases and the results are NOT comparable.

Run LINpack on that SoC and see if it really has more floating point performance than a mobile i7 like you seem to be saying.

"While we were unable to eliminate all of the performance differences between platforms, the automated performance reports helped us verify that there were no systemic issues affecting either Windows, Linux, or OS X performance. That, along with the large variety of different workloads in Geekbench 3, resulted in overall scores that vary by less than 5% across platforms:"

With a fourth core and the caches/bandwidth to sustain it, this would totally keep up! A 47 watt 4C/8T CPU from just a few years ago, now in a fanless ARM chip. That's nutty. Some people are understandably frustrated at the lack of performance gains in the high wattage segment, but where there are still big gains is bringing more power down to lower wattages.

It also seems to be a pretty fair foil for the 1499 Macbook Escape in the review charts, Intel must be watching that closely.

I /really/ want to see what an A10X could do with a heatsink and fan...

The premise that a CPU with lower power draw with larger transistors and less cache is the dominant performer across all tasks is absurd, and should be treated as absurd.

People say this every time Apple silicon does well and never back it up. It's not just Geekbench, /every/ type of benchmark corroborates where it falls vs Intel. Take your pick of them, or are all dozens of them cheated.

Look at Anandtechs last deep dive on the A9, look at how wide Apple makes their CPU cores, the large pricey caches they invest in, it's not witchcraft or cheating, it's just what makes a processor design faster while using more transistors and being more expensive. It's just as wide as Intels latest now.

The only valid argument that could be made is on the graphics side with half precision FP16, but that just means laptops could better use advantage of FP16, and will with Vega onwards.

Mouse support now, Apple. How the hell is gorilla arm a good user experience?

I'm not an UX expert, but the idea of using a mouse with an iPad seems counter intuitive and inneficient

If you are trying to use it for productivity, the mouse is still quite viable. With my Surface Pro 3 I alternate between touch, keyboard/touch, and keyboard/mouse depending on what I'm doing (or feel like).

And now, I find myself occasionally trying to use touch swipes on the screen on work and home laptops.

The two-finger drag on the iPad keyboard works great for cursor positioning while writing. This is something you're going to miss though if you use the keyboard cover (or any other hardware keyboard).

I think in most cases people who want mouse support want it for exactly this (cursor movement in text). If you use a hardware keyboard with an iPad there is indeed something missing here.